Search

After hiking around Machu Picchu and a day of rest and travel, I think we all realized just how exhausted we were. However, that didn’t stop us from hiking around Písac and climbing still more stairs. Písac is the site of Incan ruins that includes agricultural terraces, a citadel, a sun temple, and an astrological observatory. We hiked along the side of a large hill overlooking the Sacred Valley and the city of Písac in order to climb up to the Temple of the Sun. Once there, we had a panoramic view of the Urubamba River, which cuts through the valley along with many Incan terraces that are still in use today. Afterwards, we descended into the valley by route of time-worn, steep stairways but were rewarded at the bottom as we got to stroll through the famous Písac market to browse the local products.

Machu Picchu sits near the top of many people’s bucket lists, and it’s easy to see why. The original stone masonry, contrasting with the mountains, forms a setting that cannot be compared to any other place on Earth. The Incas constructed Machu Picchu in about 1450, and historians argue over the significance of the archeological site. Unnoticed and untouched by the Spanish during the conquest, the ruins were “discovered” by Hiram Bingham in 1911. Though we visited during the rainy season, the sun was shining for most of the day, and it only rained later in the afternoon (hence the change in lighting in the photos).

Photos by Megan Roltgen, Lacey Weninger and Mike Dorsher.

Equipo Peru visiting journalist Sharon Kessler has posted another Machu Picchu slideshow, focusing on the Inca’s stonework, on her StoneBankBlog.wordpress.com

This fortress surpasses the constructions known as the seven wonders of the world. For in the case of a long broad wall like that of Babylon, or the colossus of Rhodes, or the pyramids of Egypt, or the other monuments, one can see clearly how they were executed. They did it by summoning an immense body of workers and accumulating more and more material day by day and year by year. They overcame all difficuties by employing human effort over a long period. But it is indeed beyond the power of imagination to understand how these Indians, unacquainted with devices, engines, and implements, could have cut, dressed, raised, and lowered great rocks, more like lumps of hills than building stones, and set them so exactly in their places. For this reason, and because the Indians were so familiar with demons, the work is attributed to enchantment.

Textbooks and Garcilaso couldn’t prepare us for seeing Sacsayhuamán in person. This archeological site is overlooking Cusco, about 12,500 feet above sea level, and its walls contain boulders so precisely cut that a piece of paper will not fit between many of them — even after 500 years and dozens of earthquakes. Though appearing to be a fortress, many researchers believe it was actually a temple devoted to sun worship.

It remains a wonder how humans used nothing but handmade rollers, ramps, levers and chisels to mine, transport, carve and precisely fit together boulders weighing up to 200 tons!

Prominent on the road between Puno and Cusco are the world’s largest Inca temple ruins, at Raqchi. Central to the ruins is the Temple of Wiracocha, which is 300 feet long — the length of a U.S. football field — by about 80 feet wide and 60 feet high, with Inca stonework covering the first 13 feet high and adobe the rest. The Incas built the temple and surrounding quarters and granaries in the 15th century, only to have the Spanish conquistadors knock much of it down around 1540 and later build their own church in its shadow. Located on the ancient Inca Road in a beautiful valley still some 11,500 feet above sea level, Raqchi remains home to artisenias, farmers and small ranchers.